The Hedera blockchain suffered a hack and cut off access to its network

The Hedera blockchain suffered a hack and shut down access to its core network to prevent the attacker from stealing more tokens. The hacker reportedly managed to steal $570,000 across different pools of liquidity available on some decentralized exchanges (DEX) thanks to a flaw in the Hedera Smart Contract Service.

Hedera, a blockchain network that has major firms on its governance board including Dell and Ubisoft, announced this early Friday that it had suffered an attack.

The attackers exploited the Smart Contract Service code of the Hedera core network to transfer the Hedera Token Service tokens held by the victims’ accounts to their own accounts,” Hedera tweeted, noting that the operators of the Hashport bridge had been very responsive to the attack.

Technically, according to the SaucerSwap protocol, it is the process of “decompiling” the smart contracts that would have allowed the attack. The hacker would have had access to the Hedera Hashgraph Service tokens of some individuals through some liquidity pools whose code is derived from Uniswap V2.

Hedera said it later disabled proxies on its mainnet to prevent the attacker from stealing more digital coins. Its mainnet has been inaccessible for nearly 20 hours now.

The team has identified the cause of the problem and is working on a solution […] Once the solution is ready, members of the Hedera Council will sign transactions to approve the deployment of updated code on the mainnet to remove this vulnerability, Hedera reported this morning.

The proof-of-stake network did not disclose the amount of the damage. Its native token HBAR now has a market capitalization of more than $1.5 billion.